hast believed so be it unto thee Never was any Faith unseen of Christ never was any seen without allowance never was any allowed without remuneration The measure of our receits in the matter of favour is the proportion of our belief The infinite Mercy of God which is ever like it self follows but one Rule in his gift to us the Faith that he gives us Give us O God to believe and be it to us as thou wilt it shall be to us above that we will The Centurion sues for his Servant and Christ saies So be it unto thee The Servants health is the benefit of the Master and the Masters Faith is the health of the Servant And if the Prayers of an earthly Master prevailed so much with the Son of God for the recovery of a Servant how shall the intercession of the Son of God prevail with his Father in Heaven for us that are his impotent Children Servants upon Earth What can we want O Saviour whiles thou suest for us He that hath given thee for us can deny thee nothing for us can deny us nothing for thee In thee we are happy and shall be glorious To thee O thou mightie Redeemer of Israel with thine eternal Father together with thy Blessed Spirit one God infinite and incomprehensible be given all Praise Honour and Glory for ever and ever Amen Contemplations THE THIRD BOOK Containing The Widows son raised The Rulers son healed The dumb Devil ejected Matthew called Christ among the Gergesens or Legion and the Gadarene Herd To my right Worthy and Worshipful friend Mr JOHN GIFFORD OF Lancrasse in Devon Esq All Grace and Peace SIR I Hold it as I ought one of the rich mercies of God that he hath given me favour in some eyes which have not seen me but none that I know hath so much demerited me unknown as your worthy Familie Ere therefore you see my face see my hand willingly professing my thankfull obligations Wherewith may it please you to accept of this parcel of thoughts not unlike those fellows of theirs whom you have entertained above their desert These shall present unto you our Bountifull Saviour magnifying his mercies to men in a sweet variety healing the Diseased raising the Dead casting out the Devil calling in the Publican and shall raise your heart to adore that infinite goodness Every help to our Devotion deserves to be precious so much more as the decrepit age of the World declines to an heartlesse coldnesse of Piety That God to whose Honour these poor Labours are meant blesse them in your hands and from them to all Readers To his Protection I heartily commend you and the Right vertuous Gentlewoman your worthy Wife with all the Pledges of your happy affection as whom you have deserved to be Your truly thankful and officious Friend JOS. HALL The Widows son raised THE favours of our beneficent Saviour were at the least contiguous No sooner hath he raised the Centurion's Servant from his bed then he raises the Widows Son from his Biere The fruitful clouds are not ordained to fall all in one field Nain must partake of the bounty of Christ as well as Cana or Capernaum And if this Sun were fixed in one Orbe yet it diffuseth heat and light to all the world It is not for any place to ingrosse the messengers of the Gospel whose errand is universal This immortal seed may not fall all in one furrow The little City of Nain stood under the hill of Hermon near unto Tabor but now it is watered with better dews from above the Doctrine and Miracles of a Saviour Not for state but for the more evidence of the work is our Saviour attended with a large train so entering into the gate of that walled City as if he meant to besiege their Faith by his Power and to take it His Providence hath so contrived his journey that he meets with the sad pomp of a Funeral A woful Widow attended with her weeping neighbours is following her onely Son to the grave There was nothing in this spectacle that did not command compassion A young man in the flower in the strength of his age swallowed up by death Our decrepit age both exspects death and solicits it but vigorous youth looks strangely upon that grim Serjeant of God Those mellow apples that fall alone from the tree we gather up with contentment we chide to have the unripe unseasonably beaten down with cudgels But more a young man the onely Son the onely childe of his mother No condition can make it other then grievous for a well-natur'd mother to part with her own bowels yet surely store is some mitigation of loss Amongst many children one may be more easily missed for still we hope the surviving may supply the comforts of the dead But when all our hopes and joyes must either live or dy in one the loss of that one admits of no consolation When God would describe the most passionate expression of sorrow that can fall into the miserable he can but say oh daughter of my people gird thee with sackcloth and wallow thy self in the ashes make lamentation and bitter mourning as for thine onely Son Such was the loss such was the sorrow of this disconsolate mother neither words nor tears can suffice to discover it Yet more had she been aided by the counsel and supportation of a loving yoke-fellow this burden might have seemed less intolerable A good Husband may make amends for the loss of a Son had the root been left to her intire she might better have spared the branch now both are cut up all the stay of her life is gone and she seems abandoned to a perfect misery And now when she gave her self up for a forlorn mourner past all capacity of redress the God of comfort meets her pities her relieves her Here was no solicitor but his own compassion In other occasions he was sought and sued to The Centurion comes to him for a Servant the Ruler for a Son Jairus for a Daughter the neighbours for the Paralytick here he seeks up the Patient and offers the cure unrequested Whiles we have to doe with the Father of Mercies our afflictions are the most powerful suitors No teares no prayers can move him so much as his own commiseration O God none of our secret sorrows can be either hid from thine eyes or kept from thine heart and when we are past all our hopes all possibilities of help then art thou nearest to us for deliverance Here was a conspiration of all parts to mercy The Heart had compassion the Mouth said Weep not the Feet went to the Bier the Hand touched the coffin the Power of the Deity raised the dead What the Heart felt was secret to it self the Tongue therefore expresses it in words of comfort Weep not Alas what are words to so strong and just passions To bid her not to weep that had lost her only Son was to perswade her to be
the Judge of hearts taxes him for little Faith Our mountains are but moats to God Would my heart have served me to dare the doing of this that Peter did Durst I have set my foot where he did O Saviour if thou foundest cause to censure the weaknesse and poverty of his Faith what maist thou well say to mine They mistake that think thou wilt take up with any thing Thou lookest for firmitude and vigour in those Graces which thou wilt allow in thy best Disciples no lesse then truth The first steps were confident there was fear in the next Oh the sudden alteration of our affections of our dispositions One pace varies our spiritual condition What hold is there of so fickle creatures if we be left never so little to our selves As this lower world wherein we are is the region of mutability so are we the living pieces of it subject to a perpetual change It is for the blessed Saints and Angels above to be fixed in good Whiles we are here there can be no constancy expected from us but in variablenesse As well as our Saviour loves Peter yet he chides him It is the fruit of his favour and mercy that we escape judgment not that we escape reproof Had not Peter found grace with his Master he had been suffered to sink in silence now he is saved with a check There may be more love in frowns then in smiles whom he loves he chastises What is chiding but a verbal castigation and what is chastisement but a reall chiding Correct me O Lord yet in thy judgment not in thy fury Oh let the righteous God smite me when I offend with his gracious reproofs these shall be a precious oyle that shall not break my head The bloody Issue healed THE time was O Saviour when a worthy woman offered to touch thee and was forbidden now a meaner touches thee with approbation and incouragement Yet as there was much difference in that Body of thine which was the Object of that touch being now mortal and passible then impassible and immortal so there was in the Agents this a stranger that a familiar this obscure that famous The same actions vary with time and other circumstances and accordingly receive their dislike or allowance Doubtless thou hadst herein no small respect to the faith of Jairus unto whose house thou wert going That good man had but one onely Daughter which lay sick in the beginning of his suit ere the end lay dead Whiles she lived his hope lived her death disheartned it It was a great work that thou meantest to doe for him it was a great word that thou saidst to him Fear not believe and she shall be made whole To make this good by the touch of the verge of thy garment thou revivedst one from the verge of death How must Jairus needs now think He who by the virtue of his garment can pull this woman out of the paws of death which hath been twelve years dying can as well by the power of his word pull my daughter who hath been twelve years living out of the jaws of death which hath newly seised on her It was fit the good Ruler should be raised up with this handsel of thy Divine power whom he came to solicit That thou mightest lose no time thou curedst in thy passage The Sun stands not still to give his influences but diffuses them in his ordinary motion How shall we imitate thee if we suffer our hands to be out of ure with good Our life goes away with our time we lose that which we improve not The Patient laboured of an Issue of blood a Disease that had not more pain then shame nor more natural infirmity then Legal impurity Time added to her grief twelve long years had she languished under this wofull complaint Besides the tediousness diseases must needs get head by continuance and so much more both weaken Nature and strengthen themselves by how much longer they afflict us So it is in the Soul so in the State Vices which are the Sicknesses of both when they grow inveterate have a strong plea for their abode and uncontrollablenesse Yet more to mend the matter Poverty which is another disease was superadded to her sicknesse She had spent all she had upon Physicians Whiles she had wherewith to make much of her self and to procure good tendance choice diet and all the succours of a distressed languishment she could not but finde some mitigation of her sorrow but now want began to pinch her no lesse then her distemper and helpt to make her perfectly miserable Yet could she have parted from her substance with ease her complaint had been the lesse Could the Physicians have given her if not health yet relaxation and painlesnesse her means had not been mis-bestowed but now she suffered many things from them many an unpleasing potion many tormenting incisions and divulsions did she endure from their hands the Remedy was equal in trouble to the Disease Yet had the cost and pain been never so great could she have hereby purchased health the match had been happy all the world were no price for this commodity but alas her estate was the worse her body not the better her money was wasted not her disease Art could give her neither cure nor hope It were injurious to blame that noble Science for that it alwaies speeds not Notwithstanding all those soveraign remedies men must in their times sicken and die Even the miraculous Gifts of Healing could not preserve the owners from disease and dissolution It were pity but that this woman should have been thus sick the nature the durablenesse cost pain incurablenesse of her disease both sent her to seek Christ and moved Christ to her cure Our extremities drive us to our Saviour his love draws him to be most present and helpfull to our extremities When we are forsaken of all succours and hopes we are fittest for his redresse Never are we nearer to help then when we despair of help There is no fear no danger but in our own insensiblenesse This woman was a stranger to Christ it seems she had never seen him The report of his Miracles had lifted her up to such a confidence of his power and mercy as that she said in her self If I may but touch the hem of his garment I shall be whole The shame of her disease stopt her mouth from any verbal suit Had she been acknown of her infirmity she had been shunned and abhorred and disdainfully put back of all the beholders as doubtlesse where she was known the Law forced her to live apart Now she conceals both her grief and her desire and her faith and only speaks where she may be bold within her self If I may but touch the hem of his garment I shall be whole I seek not mysteries in the virtue of the hem rather then of the garment Indeed it was God's command to Israel that they should be marked not only in their
this abashed Patient I may come in and confesse my errour and implore thy mercy It is no unusall thing for kindnesse to look sternly for the time that it may indear it self more when it lists to be discovered With a severe countenance did our Saviour look about him and ask Who touched me When the woman comes in trembling and confessing both her act and successe he clears up his brows and speaks comfortably to her Daughter be of good chear thy faith hath made thee whole goe in peace O sweet and seasonable word fit for those mercifull and Divine lips able to secure any heart to dispell any fears Still O Saviour thou doest thus to us when we fall down before thee in an awfull dejectednesse thou rearest us up with a chearfull and compassionate incouragement when thou findest us bold and presumptuous thou lovest to take us down when humbled it is enough to have prostrated us Like as that Lion of Bethel worries the disobedient Prophet guards the poor Asse that stood quaking before him Or like some mighty winde that bears over a tall Elme or Cedar with the same breath that it raiseth a stooping Reed Or like some good Physician who finding the body obstructed and surcharged with ill humors evacuates it and when it is sufficiently pulled down raises it up with soveraign Cordials And still doe thou so to my Soul if at any time thou perceivest me stiffe and rebellious ready to face out my sin against thee spare me not let me smart till I relent But a broken and contrite heart thou wilt not O Lord O Lord do not reject It is only thy Word which gives what it requires comfort and confidence Had any other shaken her by the shoulder and cheared her up against those oppressive passions it had been but wast winde No voice but his who hath power to remit sin can secure the heart from the conscience of sin from the pangs of Conscience In the midst of the sorrows of my heart thy comforts O Lord thy comforts only have power to refresh my soul Her cure was Christs act yet he gives the praise of it to her Thy faith hath made thee whole He had said before Virtue is gone out from me now he acknowledges a virtue inherent in her It was his virtue that cured her yet he graciously casts this work upon her Faith Not that her Faith did it by way of merit by way of efficiency but by way of impetration So much did our Saviour regard that Faith which he had wrought in her that he will honour it with the successe of her Cure Such and the same is still the remedy of our spirituall diseases our sins By faith we are justified by faith we are saved Thou only O Saviour canst heal us thou wilt not heal us but by our Faith not as it issues from us but as it appropriates thee The sicknesse is ours the remedy is ours the sicknesse is our own by nature the remedy ours by thy grace both working and accepting it Our Faith is no lesse from thee then thy Cure is from our Faith Oh happy dismission Goe in peace How unquiet had this poor soul formerly been She had no outward peace with her Neighbours they shunned and abhorred her presence in this condition yea they must doe so She had no peace in Body that was pained and vexed with so long and foul a disease Much lesse had she peace in her Minde which was grievously disquieted with sorrow for her sicknesse with anger and discontentment at her torturing Physicians with fear of the continuance of so bad a guest Her Soul for the present had no peace from the sense of her guiltinesse in the carriage of this businesse from the conceived displeasure of him to whom she came for comfort and redresse At once now doth our Saviour calm all these storms and in one word and act restores to her peace with her Neighbours peace in her Self peace in Body in Minde in Soul Goe in peace Even so Lord it was for thee only who art the Prince of Peace to bestow thy peace where thou pleasest Our body minde Soul estate is thine whether to afflict or ease It is a wonder if all of us doe not aile somewhat In vain shall we speak peace to our selves in vain shall the world speak peace to us except thou say to us as thou didst to this distressed soul Goe in peace JAIRUS and his Daughter HOw troublesome did the peoples importunity seem to Jairus That great man came to sue unto Jesus for his dying Daughter the throng of the multitude intercepted him Every man is most sensible of his own necessity It is no straining courtesie in the challenge of our interest in Christ there is no unmannerlinesse in our strife for the greatest share in his presence and benediction That only Childe of this Ruler lay a dying when he came to solicite Christs aide and was dead whiles he solicited it There was hope in her sicknesse in her extremity there was fear in her death despair and impossibility as they thought of help Thy daughter is dead trouble not the Master When we have to doe with a mere finite power this word were but just He was a Prophet no lesse then a King that said Whiles the childe was yet alive I fasted and wept for I said Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me that the childe may live But now he is dead wherefore should I fast Can I bring him back again I shall goe to him but he shall not return to me But since thou hast to doe with an Omnipotent agent know now O thou faithlesse messenger that death can be no bar to his power How well would it have become thee to have said Thy daughter is dead but who can tell whether thy God and Saviour will not be gracious to thee that the childe may revive Cannot he in whose hands are the issues of death bring her back again Here were more Manners then Faith Trouble not the Master Infidelity is all for ease and thinks every good work tedious That which Nature accounts troublesome is pleasing and delightfull to Grace Is it any pain for an hungry man to eate O Saviour it was thy meat and drink to doe thy Fathers will and his will was that thou shouldest bear our griefs and take away our sorrows It cannot be thy trouble which is our happinesse that we may still sue to thee The messenger could not so whisper his ill news but Jesus heard it Jairus hears that he feared and was now heartlesse with so sad tidings He that resolved not to trouble the Master meant to take so much more trouble to himself and would now yield to a hopelesse sorrow He whose work it is to comfort the afflicted rouzeth up the dejected heart of that pensive father Fear not believe only and she shall be made whole The word was not more chearfull then difficult Fear not Who can
the same power slackned those swathing-bands of death that the feet might have some little scope to move though not with that freedome that followed after Thou didst not onely O Saviour raise the body of Lazarus but the Faith of the beholders They cannot deny him dead whom they saw rising they see the signes of death with the proofs of life Those very swathes convinced him to be the man that was raised Thy less Miracle confirms the greater both confirm the Faith of the beholders O clear and irrefragable example of our resuscitation Say now ye shameless Sadducees with what face can ye deny the Resurrection of the body when ye see Lazarus after four-days death rising up out of his grave And if Lazarus did thus start up at the bleating of this Lamb of God that was now every day preparing for the slaughter-house how shall the dead be rouzed up out of their graves by the roaring of that glorious and immortal Lion whose voice shall shake the powers of Heaven and move the very foundations of the earth With what strange amazedness do we think that Martha and Mary the Jews and the Disciples lookt to see Lazarus come forth in his winding-sheet shackled with his linen fetters and walk towards them Doubtless fear and horrour strove in them whether should be for the time more predominant We love our friends dearly but to see them again after their known death and that in the very robes of the grave must needs set up the hair in a kinde of uncouth rigour And now though it had been most easie for him that brake the adamantine fetters of death to have broke in pieces those linen ligaments wherewith his raised Lazarus was encumbred yet he will not doe it but by their hands He that said Remove the stone said Loose Lazarus He will not have us exspect his immediate help in that we can doe for our selves It is both a laziness and a presumptuous tempting of God to look for and extraordinary and supernatural help from God where he hath inabled us with common aid What strange salutations do we think there were betwixt Lazarus and Christ that had raised him betwixt Lazarus and his Sisters and neighbors and friends what amazed looks what unusual complements For Lazarus was himself at once here was no leisure of degrees to reduce him to his wonted perfection neither did he stay to rub his eyes and stretch his benummed lims nor take time to put off that dead sleep wherewith he had been seized but instantly he is both alive and fresh and vigorous if they do but let him goe he walks so as if he had ailed nothing and receives and gives mutual gratulations I leave them entertaining each other with glad embraces with discourses of reciprocal admiration with praises and adorations of that God and Saviour that had fetched him into life Christ's Procession to the Temple NEver did our Saviour take so much state upon him as now that he was going towards his Passion other journies he measured on foot without noise or train this with a Princely equipage and loud acclamation Wherein yet O Saviour whether shall I more wonder at thy Majesty or thine Humility that Divine Majesty which lay hid under so humble appearance or that sincere Humility which veiled so great a glory Thou O Lord whose chariots are twenty thousand even thousands of Angels wouldst make choice of the silliest of beasts to carry thee in thy last and Royal Progress How well is thy birth suited with thy triumph Even that very Ass whereon thou rodest was prophesied of neither couldst thou have made up those vaticall Predictions without this conveyance O glorious and yet homely pomp Thou wouldst not lose ought of thy right thou that wast a King wouldst be proclaimed so but that it might appear thy Kingdome was not of this world thou that couldst have commanded all worldly magnificence thoughtest fit to abandon it In stead of the Kings of the earth who reigning by thee might have been imployed in thine attendance the people are thine heralds their homely garments are thy foot-cloth and carpets their green boughs the strewings of thy way those Palms which were wont to be born in the hands of them that triumph are strewed under the feet of thy beast It was thy greatness and honour to contemn those glories which worldly hearts were wont to admire Justly did thy Followers hold the best ornaments of the earth worthy of no better then thy treading upon neither could they ever account their garments so rich as when they had been trampled upon by thy carriage How happily did they think their backs disrobed for thy way How gladly did they spend their breath in acclaming thee Hosanna to the Son of David Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Where now are the great Masters of the Synagogue that had enacted the ejection of whosoever should confess Jesus to be the Christ Lo here bold and undaunted clients of the Messiah that dare proclaim him in the publick road in the open streets In vain shall the impotent enemies of Christ hope to suppress his glory as soon shall they with their hand hide the face of the Sun from shining to the world as withhold the beams of his Divine truth from the eyes of men by their envious opposition In spight of all Jewish malignity his Kingdome is confessed applauded blessed O thou fairer then the children of men in thy Majesty ride on prosperously because of truth and meekness and righteousness and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things In this Princely and yet poor and despicable pomp doth our Saviour enter into the famous City of Jerusalem Jerusalem noted of old for the seat of Kings Priests Prophets of Kings for there was the throne of David of Priests for there was the Temple of Prophets for there they delivered their errands and left their blood Neither know I whether it were more wonder for a Prophet to perish out of Jerusalem or to be safe there Thither would Jesus come as a King as a Priest as a Prophet acclamed as a King teaching the people and foretelling the wofull vastation of it as a Prophet and as a Priest taking possession of his Temple and vindicating it from the foul profanations of Jewish Sacriledge Oft before had he come to Jerusalem without any remarkable change because without any semblance of State now that he gives some little glimpse of his Royalty the whole City was moved When the Sages of the East brought the first news of the King of the Jewes Herod was troubled and all Jerusalem with him and now that the King of the Jews comes himself though in so mean a port there is a new commotion The silence and obscurity of Christ never troubles the world he may be an underling without any stir but if he do but put forth himself never so little to bear the least sway amongst men now their blood
shall never be dryed And Peter went out and wept bitterly Christ before Pilate WEll worthy were these Jews to be tributary they had cast off the yoke of their God and had justly earned this Roman servitude Tiberius had befriended them too well with so favourable a Governour as Pilate Had they had the power of life and death in their hands they had not been beholden to an Heathen for a Legal murder I know not whether they more repine at this slavery or please themselves to think how cleanly they can shift off this blood into anothers hand These great Masters of Israel flock from their own Consistory to Pilate's Judgment-hall The Sentence had been theirs the Execution must be his and now they hope to bear down Jesus with the stream of that frequent confluence But what ailes you O ye Rulers of Israel that ye stand thus thronging at the door why do ye not go in to that publick room of Judicature to call for that Justice ye came for Was it for that ye would not defile your selves with the contagion of an Heathen roof Holy men your Consciences would not suffer you to yield to so impure an act your Passeover must be kept your persons must be clean whiles ye exspect Justice from the man ye abhor the pollution of the place Woe to you Priests Scribes Elders Hypocrites can there be any roof so unclean as that of your own breasts Not Pilate's walls but your hearts are impure Is Murder your errand and do you stick at a local infection God shall smite you ye whited walls Do ye long to be stained with blood with the blood of God and do ye fear to be defiled with the touch of Pilate's pavement Doth so small a gnat stick in your throats whiles ye swallow such a Camel of flagitious wickednesse Goe out of your selves ye false dissemblers if ye would not be unclean Pilate onwards hath more cause to fear lest his walls should be defiled with the presence of so prodigious Monsters of Impiety That plausible Governour condescends to humour their Superstition They dare not come in to him he yields to goe forth to them Even Pilate begins justly What accusation bring you against this man It is no judging of Religion by the outward demeanour of men there is more Justice amongst Romans then amongst Jews These malicious Rabbies thought it enough that they had sentenced Jesus no more was now exspected but a speedy execution If he were not a malefactor we would not have delivered him up unto thee Civil Justice must be their hangman It is enough conviction that he is delivered up to the secular powers Themselves have judged these other must kill Pilate and Caiaphas have changed places this Pagan speaks that Law and Justice which that High priest should have done and that High priest speaks those murdering incongruities which would better have beseemed the mouth of a Pagan What needs any new triall Dost thou know Pilate who we are Is this the honour that thou givest to our sacred Priesthood Is this thy valuation of our Sanctity Had the basest of the vulgar complained to thee thou couldst but have put them to a review Our Place and Holinesse lookt not to be distrusted If our scrupulous Consciences suspect thy very walls thou maiest well think there is small reason to suspect our Consciences Upon a full hearing ripe deliberation and exquisitely-judicial proceeding we have sentenced this Malefactor to death there needs no more from thee but thy command of Execution Oh monster whether of Malice or Unjustice Must he then be a Malefactor whom ye will condemn Is your bare word ground enough to shed blood Whom did ye ever kill but the righteous By whose hands perished the Prophets The word was but mistaken ye should have said If we had not been Malefactors we had never delivered up this innocent man unto thee It must needs be notoriously unjust which very Nature hath taught Pagans to abhor Pilate sees and hates this bloody suggestion and practice Do ye pretend Holiness and urge so injurious a violence If he be such as ye accuse him where is his conviction If he cannot be legally convicted why should he die Do you think I may take your complaint for a crime If I must judge for you why have you judged for your selves Could ye suppose that I would condemn any man unheard If your Jewish Laws yield you this liberty the Roman Laws yield it not to me It is not for me to judge after your laws but after our own Your prejudgment may not sway me Since ye have gone so far be ye your own carvers of Justice Take ye him and judge him according to your law O Pilate how happy had it been for thee if thou hadst held thee there thus thou hadst wash'd thy hands more clean then in all thy basons Might Law have been the rule of this Judgment and not Malice this blood had not been shed How palpably doth their tongue bewray their heart It is not lawfull for us to put any man to death Pilate talks of Judgment they talk of Death This was their only aime Law was but a colour Judgment was but a ceremony Death was their drift and without this nothing Blood-thirsty Priests and Elders it is well that this power of yours is restrained no Innocence could have been safe if your lawlesse will had had no limits It were pity this sword should be in any but just and sober hands Your fury did not alwaies consult with Law what Law allowed your violence to Stephen to Paul and Barnabas and your deadly attempts against this Blessed Jesus whom ye now persecute How lawfull was it for you to procure that death which ye could not inflict It is all the care of Hypocrites to seek umbrages and pretences for their hatefull purposes and to make no other use of Laws whether Divine or humane but to serve turns Where death is fore-resolved there cannot want accusations Malice is not so barren as not to yield crimes enough And they began to accuse him saying We found this fellow perverting the nation and forbidding to give tribute unto Casear saying that he himself is Christ and King What accusations saidst thou O Pilate Hainous capital Thou mightest have believed our confident intimation but since thou wilt needs urge us to particulars know that we come furnished with such an inditement as shall make thine ears glow to hear it Besides that Blasphemy whereof he hath been condemned by us this man is a Seducer of the people a raiser of Sedition an usurper of Soveraignty O impudent suggestion What marvel is it O Saviour if thine honest servants beloaded with slanders when thy most innocent person escaped not so shamefull criminations Thou a perverter of the Nation who taughtest the way of God truly Thou a forbidder of Tribute who payedst it who prescribedst it who provedst it to be Caesar's due Thou a challenger of temporal Soveraignty who
of darknesse Heaven is high and hard to reach Hell is steep and slipperie our Flesh is earthy and impotent Satan strong rancorous Sin subtle the World alluring all these yet God is the God of our Salvation Let those infernal Lions roar and ramp upon us let the gates of Hell doe their worst let the World be a cheater our Flesh a traitor the Devil a tyrant Faithfull is he that hath promised who will also doe it God is the God of our Salvation How much more then in these outward temporal occasions when we have to doe with an arm of flesh Do the enemies of the Church rage and snuffe and breath nothing but threats and death Make sure of our God he shall be sure to make them lick our dust Great Benhadad of the Syrians shall come with his hempen collar to the King of Israel The very windes and waves shall undertake those Mahumetan or Marian powers that shall rise up against the inheritance of the God of Salvation Salvation is rateable according to the danger from which we are delivered Since Death therefore is the utmost of all terribles needs must it be the highest improvement of Salvation that to our God belong the issues from death Death hath here a double latitude of kinde of extent The kinde is either temporal or eternal the extent reaches not only to the last compleat act of dissolution but to all the passages that lead towards it Thus the issues from death belong to our God whether by way of preservation or by way of rescue How gladly do I meet in my Text with the dear and sweet name of our Jesus who conquered Death by dying and triumphed over Hell by suffering and carries the keyes both of death and hell Revel 1. 18 He is the God the Author and Finisher of our Salvation to whom belong the issues from death Look first at the temporary he keeps it from us he fetches us from it It is true there is a Statutum est upon it die we must Death knocks equally at the hatch of a Cottage and gate of a Palace but our times are in God's hand the Lord of life hath set us our period whose Omnipotence so contrives all events that neither enemy nor casualty nor disease can prevent his hour Were death suffered to run loose and wild what boot were it to live now it is tether'd up short by that Almighty hand what can we fear If envy repine and villany plot against Sacred Soveraignty God hath well proved upon all the Poisons and Pistols and Poniards and Gun-powders of the two late memorable successions that to him alone belong the issues from death Goe on then blessed Soveraign goe on couragiously in the waies of your God the invisible guard of Heaven shall secure your Royal head the God of our Salvation shall make you a third glorious instance to all posterities that unto him belong the issues from death Thus God keeps death from us it is more comfort yet that he fetches us from it Even the best head must at last lie down in the dust and sleep in death Oh vain cracks of valour thou bragst thy self able to kill a man a worm hath done it a flie hath done it Every thing can finde the way down unto death none but the Omnipotent can finde the way up out of it He findes he makes these issues for all his As it was with our Head so it is with the Members Death might seize it cannot hold Gustavit non deglutivit It may nibble at us it shall not devour us Behold the only Soveraign Antidote against the sorrows the frights of death Who can fear to lay himself down and take a nap in the bed of death when his heart is assured that he shall awake glorious in the morning of his resurrection Certainly it is only our infidelity that makes death fearfull Rejoice not over me O my last enemy though I fall I shall rise again O Death where is thy sting O Grave where is thy victory Cast ye one glance of your eyes upon the second and eternal death the issues wherefrom belong to our God not by way of rescue as in the former but of preservation Ex inferno nulla redemptio is as true as if it were Canonical Father Abraham tells the damned Glutton in the Parable there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a great gulf that bars all return Those black gates of Hell are barred without by the irreversible Decree of the Almighty Those bold Fabulists therefore whose impious Legends have devised Trajan fetcht thence by the prayers of Gregory and Falconella by Tecla's suspending the finall sentence upon a secundum praesentem injustitiam take a course to cast themselves into that pit whence they have presumptuously feigned the deliverance of others The rescue is not more hopelesse then the prevention is comfortable There is none of us but is naturally walking down to these chambers of death every sin is a pace thitherwards only the gracious hand of our God staies us In our selves in our sins we are already no better then brands of that Hell Blessed be the God of our Salvation that hath found happy issues from this death What issues Even those bloody issues that were made in the hands and feet and side of our Blessed Saviour that invaluably-precious blood of the Son of God is that whereby we are redeemed whereby we are justified whereby we are saved Oh that our Souls might have had leisure to dwell a while upon the meditation of those dreadfull torments we are freed from of that infinite goodnesse that hath freed us of that happy exchange of a glorious condition to which we are freed But the publick occasion of this day calls off my speech and invites me to the celebration of the sensible mercy of God in our late Temporal deliverance Wherein let me first blesse the God of our Salvation that hath put it into the heart of his chosen Servant to set up an Altar in this sacred threshing-floor and to offer up this daies Sacrifice to his name for the stay of our late mortal contagion How well it becomes our Gideon to be personally exemplary as in the beating of this Earthen pitcher in the first publick act of Humiliation so in the lighting of this Torch of publick joy and sounding the Trumpet of a thankfull jubilation and how well will it become us to follow so pious so gracious an example Come therefore all ye that fear the Lord and let us recount what he hath done for our Souls Come let us blesse the Lord the God of our Salvation that loadeth us daily with benefits the God to whom belong the issues of death Let us blesse him in his infinite Essence and Power blesse him in his unbounded and just Soveraignty blesse him in his marvellous Beneficence large continual undeserved blesse him in his Preservations blesse him in his Deliverances We may but touch at the two last How is